Stalled Residential Tower in Lower Manhattan to Rise Next to Woolworth Building
(Courtesy Silverstein Properties / Bing Maps)
A giant residential skyscraper is slated to join Manhattan’s skyline— rising more than 130 feet above its neighbor, the Woolworth Building. Developer Silverstein Properties announced today that $950 million in funding has been secured to move forward with the construction of the Robert A.M. Stern Architects-designed tower at 30 Park Place in Lower Manhattan.
Product> Tread on Gehry, Zaha, Tigerman, and Friends
Arabesque by Michael Graves.
ARZU STUDIO HOPE and live/work furniture company Coalesse have teamed up with six leading architects to design a series of bold rugs and also provide economic opportunities for Afghan women. Chicago-based ARZU first approached Stanley Tigerman and Margaret McCurry to design a collection of contemporary rugs, the proceeds of which support hundreds of rural women and their families through economic activity, and educational and health services. Rug weaving, which takes place in private homes, is one of the few industries where women can work safely.
Postmodernism Post-Denial
Montage based on Stanley Tigerman's "Titanic" with Philip Johnson's AT&T Building and text drawn by Seth Weine/ICAA
Postmodernism, the exuberant, eclectic, and ironic style born out of the death of the modernist dream in the 1960s and 70s, was the subject of the two-day-long “Reconsidering Postmodernism” conference last weekend, presented by the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York. The two marathon days of lectures, panels, and videos was filled with the original rock stars of the postmodernist world, including architects Robert A. M. Stern and Michael Graves, theorists Charles Jencks and Tom Wolfe, urbanists Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and a small but passionate younger crowd who couldn’t help but revel in the rambunctiousness of their vaunted forebearers.
Stern’s Revolution Museum Silences QEII Bell
Queen Elizabeth II at the dedication of the Bicentennial Bell in 1976. (Courtesy phillyhistory.org)
After rejecting two plans for the Museum of the American Revolution at Valley Forge, the American Revolution Center (ARC) made a land swap with the National Park Service to secure a prime location in Center City Philadelphia. In exchange for donating their 78-acre property at the Valley Forge site, the Park Service will give the museum nearly two-thirds of the space of the former National Park Visitors Center near Independence Mall on Third Street. ARC selected Robert A.M. Stern to design the $150 million building. Stern told ThePhiladelphia Inquirer he plans to use “the language of traditional Philadelphia architecture.” The 1970s era building designed by Cambridge Seven and its redbrick modernist bell tower holding the Bicentennial Bell, a gift to United States from Queen Elizabeth II, will be demolished, and critics worry the future of the bell itself is uncertain.
Quick Clicks> Capping Highways, Flying Meteors, Infrastructure Pop, Old School Ivy
Proposed highway-straddling structure in Santa Monica. (Courtesy Curbed)
Capping Santa Monica. Curbed LA got some great renderings from students at USC who where charged with imagining even more highway caps for the Pacific Coast Highway, this time from Arizona to California Avenues. Beyond freeway parks, the students proposed housing, hotels, and community centers.
Breaking Whitney. With the deal signed for the Met to take over the Whitney‘s Breuer building on Madison, directors at the ground breaking for the new branch at the High Line had all the more reason to celebrate. DNA reminds readers that the museum is actually retuning home. Ol’ Gerty got the ball rolling on 8th Street way back in 1930.
Dylan Sings. Happy B-day Bobby! Bob Dylan turned 70 on Tuesday and in celebration the Infrastructurist presents Dylan’s Ten Best Infrastructure Songs, including “The Levee’s Gonna Break” and “Marchin’ to the City.”
Old School. Design New Haven has the Robert A.M. Stern drawings for “street calming measures” at Yale that are part of the $600 million for renovations, including two new residential colleges. The plan includes mixed use buildings intended to encourage street life at all hours and improved access to the Farmington Canal Greenway .
Driehaus Awards the Much-Awarded Stern
The design for the George W. Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas (all images courtesy Notre Dame School of Architecture).
The University of Notre Dame School of Architecture announced that Robert A. M. Stern has been named this year’s Richard H. Driehaus laureate. The prize, which comes with a $200,000 purse, “honors the best practitioners of traditional, classical, and sustainable architecture and urbanism in the modern world,” according to a statement. Founded in 2003, the prize has previously honored lesser known architects such as Rafael Manzano Martos of Spain and Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil of Egypt in addition to marquee American traditional and classicist architects like Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Allan Greenberg (several Driehaus recipients have also won or been involved in the National Building Museum’s Vincent Scully Prize).
Click through to see more of Stern’s work
Americans at the Door
The Dror door: Davina (All photos courtesy Lualdi)
Last night at Material ConneXion Italian door manufacturer Lualdi unveiled its first collection of doors designed by U.S.-based architects. Dror Benshetrit’s lacquered red Davina door stole the show with a diagonally folded design that makes the door appear slightly ajar when closed. Read More
Eavesdrop NY 16
Brangelina shopping for gerbils for the kids. The furry little things—no, not the kids—would soon occupy an $82,000 Rodentopia. (Courtesy Yeeeah.com)
WE SMELL RATS
Really? The British tabloids (all of them) are reporting that architectural fetishist and actor, Brad Pitt, has built a gerbil “Neverland” for his six children’s herd on his and Angelina’s estate in the South of France. If you believe what they’re reporting, Pitt paid somewhere between $50,000 and $80,000 on an “elaborate gerbil run [that] has a maze of tunnels, seesaws, and platforms for the pets to live in,” according to ever-present anonymous sources. Pets? Gerbils are rodents. Besides, what do gerbils know about architecture? Eavesdrop wants to see the Rodentia brief, renderings, reflected-ceiling and sprinkler plans, specs, etc. Read More
Bette Midler, Gardener
She's at it again: Bette Midler is adding to her good works in the city, which already include this Robert A.M. Stern boathouse on the Harlem River.
Bloomberg Networks’ architectural critic James Russell writes today about Bette Midler’s continuing commitment to beautifying some of New York’s derelict open spaces (with the unintentional side effect of reducing the number of “Law & Order” crime-scene sites). The Divine Miss M is in New York “to open a community garden next to an abandoned tenement, the 33rd oasis her New York Restoration Project has transformed from garbage-strewn wasteland.” You remember the Peter Jay Sharp Boathouse by Robert A. M. Stern with Armand LeGardeur on the Harlem River in Swindler Cove Park, one of the Restoration Project’s most lauded transformations.
Eavesdrop NY 10
We know you love the gossip. AN aims to satisfy that itch in print, online, East Coast, West Coast, whatever, wherever, whenever. So here comes Eavesdrop to our blog so you can get it faster, feistier, anywhere you are. Plus, we will be posting Sara Hart’s online-only EAVESDROP ALERTs. But the real fun begins in the comments section, where you can lay on your own gossipy tidbits. And Sara will be sure to respond.
For Whom the Buell Tolls
There are some whispers coming from the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University’s GSAPP. Our ears immediately perked up, because we never hear anything much from that stone corner of the academic groves. Founded in 1982, the center’s first director was Robert A.M. Stern, who was followed by Gwendolyn Wright, Richard Buford, Joan Ockman (who stepped down about a year ago), and Reinhold Martin, who currently holds the post. The whispers have it that Professor Martin is changing the center’s mild mission to a more politically left-leaning agenda. Some female members of the 12-person board of advisers are also miffed that he’s held boys-only dinners, like a recent bash with board members Peter Eisenman, Stern, and GSAPP Dean Mark Wigley. Could another Penguin Club be in the making?
Esto-ordinary Videos
(Albert Vecerka/Esto)
“Everybody’s doing it.”
That’s how Erica Stoller of Esto described the august architectural photo agency’s foray into web video. Now don’t fret. At the heart of these videos remains Esto’s unparalleled still camerawork, but given these changing times, experimentation is in order. And, as Stoller’s colleague Joel Sanders explained, the philosophy remains the same. Read More
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